Speaker 1: Hello everybody, it's me Josh, and to get you in
Speaker 1: the holiday spirit, I've selected for this week's s Y
Speaker 1: s K selects our episode on Black Friday, classic episode
Speaker 1: uh that I'm hoping you'll enjoy because it's apparently the
Speaker 1: most deadly time of the year. Get in the grinchy
Speaker 1: spirit and listen to us basically demolish the most made
Speaker 1: up sub holiday ever invented. It's as good as the
Speaker 1: day it dropped. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and with me as always
Speaker 1: as Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there, and that
Speaker 1: makes this stuff you should have. That's that you just
Speaker 1: checked to make sure Jerry was there. She's very quiet.
Speaker 1: You literally turned her head and body right. Yep, she's there.
Speaker 1: I did the bigfoot thing like I had to turn
Speaker 1: my whole the whole side of my body to look
Speaker 1: over my shoulder. That's how you know that was real footage. Well,
Speaker 1: typically when you know Jerry's here, because you can just
Speaker 1: smell like me so soup or something emanating from our
Speaker 1: right side or my right side, your right side but
Speaker 1: it's not emanating from you, it's coming from Jerry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she stinks like me, so, which is actually a very
Speaker 1: pleasant smell, salty and new mommy. That's right. Uh so, Chuck. Yes,
Speaker 1: have you ever been to a Black Friday sale? No? No,
Speaker 1: And I want to say, h no. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's not for me. That's a decent qualifier though,
Speaker 1: because it's it's not like an average sale, and like,
Speaker 1: if you don't go to a Black Friday sale, uh,
Speaker 1: it's they're a pretty good reason. Why is because you're scared.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and I think this is one of those
Speaker 1: a very divisive topic. You're probably either really into going
Speaker 1: or it's the last thing on earth you would rather do.
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot of people are like, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll go check out a doorbuster three am. I think
Speaker 1: there are people who who do have that kind of
Speaker 1: that idea, but maybe not at three am. Sure, there's
Speaker 1: it's almost like a multifaceted creature like it is for
Speaker 1: some people, like just in the middle of a normal
Speaker 1: shopping day on the Friday after Thanksgiving, they'll go to
Speaker 1: a store and it's fine and there's some sales or whatever,
Speaker 1: But then you know hours earlier, these hardcore people you
Speaker 1: know who would bathed in the blood or their fellow
Speaker 1: shoppers sadly, yeah yeah, um had had already come through
Speaker 1: and gotten all the best deals. But and then there's
Speaker 1: those of us like us who are just like going out.
Speaker 1: It is literally and I'm not overstating this because people
Speaker 1: always say literally when they mean figurat figuratively, but is
Speaker 1: literally one of the last things I would ever ever
Speaker 1: do in my life. Yeah, I can't think of many.
Speaker 1: I'd rather go to the d m V then go
Speaker 1: to a doorbuster the d m V in between North
Speaker 1: Korea and South Korea. No, no, no, no, that's the
Speaker 1: d m Z right, Okay, I always get this. Who confused? Now,
Speaker 1: I'd rather go take the last ticket from at the
Speaker 1: d m V and have to wait all day than
Speaker 1: go to a doorbuster sale. Yeah no, I don't blame you,
Speaker 1: all right, So that's what we'll get to more hate
Speaker 1: spewing about this layer, but right, and I should state
Speaker 1: my opinion. I feel like, if this is your thing,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. Well true, true, I'm not like cast dispurgence
Speaker 1: on people who disparaging remarks. Is dispurgence a word no,
Speaker 1: it is no though, Uh, you're like your own like
Speaker 1: an American dictionary, the New Chuck Dictionary. We should make
Speaker 1: that up. I like it. Yeah, you could have like
Speaker 1: five or six words already, Chuck is um um, yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying like pooping people who do it. If
Speaker 1: you're into it, great, as long as you conduct yourself
Speaker 1: in a reasonable manner and you don't turn into a
Speaker 1: monster like others do. Right, And but there is like
Speaker 1: there are obvious criticisms of the day too, which we'll
Speaker 1: get into. But I think first, Chuck, we should explain
Speaker 1: what the as you would say, h we're talking about
Speaker 1: to the people who listen to this podcast and don't
Speaker 1: live in the United States, because Black Friday is pty
Speaker 1: much a uniquely American experience. It is I think most
Speaker 1: people probably know, but just very quickly. It is the
Speaker 1: day after Thanksgiving now in the United States is known
Speaker 1: as Black Friday, and we'll get into the pretty interesting
Speaker 1: history of it. But um, it's the biggest shopping day
Speaker 1: of the year. And there are all these crazy specials
Speaker 1: that they run and we'll get into that as well,
Speaker 1: but quite simply, it is the busiest shopping day of
Speaker 1: the year day after Thanksgiving, right, and um, it's it's origins. Well,
Speaker 1: the origin of the term black Friday goes back kind
Speaker 1: of a ways, apparently to the the mid twentieth century,
Speaker 1: but the idea of going shopping, starting your Christmas shopping
Speaker 1: on the day after Thanksgiving actually goes back to the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century early twentieth century. Um, thanks to the
Speaker 1: department stores like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and as
Speaker 1: a part of those parades, accident Macy's Parade, right exactly,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it's still a good parade though, Um,
Speaker 1: have you ever been? No, I haven't, Yeah, ever been
Speaker 1: to the parade, but a couple of times, Emily and
Speaker 1: I've gone to the day before when they blow up
Speaker 1: the which is really neat, very cool. You mean I
Speaker 1: have a friend who's actually holding one of the floats
Speaker 1: the balloons. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's fun to do. Although
Speaker 1: we did it like eight or nine years ago and
Speaker 1: it was it was really neat and sort of crowded,
Speaker 1: and then we did it a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: and it is nuts now, is it. It's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of gone overboard. The word got out. I think
Speaker 1: I saw Yeah, I saw something last year in the news. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a place to go if you don't like strollers.
Speaker 1: Let's just say that. Oh yeah, oh yeah strollers with
Speaker 1: all train entires. Ye. Um. So, but the the idea
Speaker 1: of going starting your Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: came from those parades, and they came from those parades
Speaker 1: because all of those parades, pretty much to a parade
Speaker 1: featured Santa Claus. Yeah, and usually at the end kind
Speaker 1: of like bringing up the rear, and that means we're
Speaker 1: kicking it off. That's the official start of the holiday season.
Speaker 1: That's right, Santa Claus has made his first public appearance. So. Um,
Speaker 1: from the association of those two came going holiday shopping
Speaker 1: the day after Thanksgiving. That was in the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: in the fifties they think, or early sixties. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: the fifties, calling the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday came about,
Speaker 1: but it didn't necessarily have anything to do with shopping
Speaker 1: by then. It was from factory owners who apparently coined
Speaker 1: the term. Yeah, and there's also the other competing theory
Speaker 1: that it was the day that uh stores would go
Speaker 1: into the black meaning start to show profit. But Um,
Speaker 1: that's not quite right as it. No, so that's actually
Speaker 1: a well, it's a made up fallacy to gloss over
Speaker 1: the original meaning of black Friday. Um. And it came
Speaker 1: out of Philadelphia in the sixties, and the cops and
Speaker 1: the bus drivers and the city workers who worked downtown
Speaker 1: came up with calling that day black Friday because apparently
Speaker 1: tons of out of towners would leave their homes on
Speaker 1: Thanksgive converge on Philadelphia to watch the Army Navy games
Speaker 1: on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but they had a day
Speaker 1: to kill, so they all started doing their Christmas shopping
Speaker 1: because there were sales in downtown Philly every year and
Speaker 1: the place would be nuts. Uh. And this was where
Speaker 1: black Friday came from. Apparently the police department wanted to
Speaker 1: basically keep people away, so they'd be like, well, you
Speaker 1: don't want to go to downtown Philly, it's black Friday.
Speaker 1: And uh. That was the original um reason or origin
Speaker 1: of the term. Yeah, I see you saw in here
Speaker 1: article from the AP in nineteen five, a sales manager
Speaker 1: at Gimbal's UM was quoted as saying, that's why bus
Speaker 1: drivers and cab drivers call today black Friday. Uh. They
Speaker 1: think in terms of the headaches that it gives them.
Speaker 1: So I learned something new when I read this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then had no idea it spread out of Philly.
Speaker 1: And then years later the retail lobbies and retailers themselves said,
Speaker 1: we got to come up with a better, a better
Speaker 1: origin story for this, because we want this to be
Speaker 1: a day that people want to get out of their
Speaker 1: house and go shopping. You know. But we should point
Speaker 1: out even though it is not the day that companies
Speaker 1: go into the black as it were, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: it comes from when they did accounting by hand, you'd
Speaker 1: write in red ink or black ink, depending on you
Speaker 1: were ahead with money or behind red ink. Men you
Speaker 1: were in the hole. Yeah, black man, everything's good exactly,
Speaker 1: even though it does not mean that. Um. The holiday
Speaker 1: shopping season is when stores make up between twenty and
Speaker 1: of their retail profits. So it's a lot. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean even emily small business like the I don't know
Speaker 1: about majority, but a large percentage of her yearly sales
Speaker 1: or you know, a couple of months, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's not just her apparently. Um. In two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: the National Retail Federation is predicting that Americans just in
Speaker 1: November and December, Chuck, are you ready for this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Americans are going to spend six d and two billion
Speaker 1: dollars in November and December. That's cray, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of cash. Yeah, in two months. Yeah. I don't spend
Speaker 1: like I used to on Christmas. Um. Emily and I
Speaker 1: sometimes will spend on gifts on each other or do
Speaker 1: that like a couple things where you like, go in
Speaker 1: and just do something nice for your house. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then like the adults on my side of the family,
Speaker 1: you don't exchange gifts anymore. Um just dirty looks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exchange like my brother, my sister will chip in usually
Speaker 1: and get my mom something kind of nice or give
Speaker 1: her offer her a service, like last year we replaced
Speaker 1: her fireplace with like a gas fireplace, or build her
Speaker 1: a garden fence, or tile her kitchen like something like that.
Speaker 1: Why got it? Yeah, she's an easy street is what
Speaker 1: you call that. But Emily's family that they all still
Speaker 1: exchange gifts. I still have my Christmas gift swapping Joan satisfied.
Speaker 1: You know, yes, you get your Christmas present on Yeah okay,
Speaker 1: Chuck so um. The the the idea of shopping after Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: and then Black Friday. That day being called Black Friday.
Speaker 1: It's been around for a while, um, and it's a
Speaker 1: really valuable day, you know, it kicks off that two
Speaker 1: month period where six billion dollars is going to be
Speaker 1: spent on stuff. But it was created, like Valentine's Day,
Speaker 1: it was literally created, and then the myth kind of
Speaker 1: became reality just because they said everyone's gonna shop to day.
Speaker 1: It's the busiest day, and it became that. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't until two thousand four. Usually the Saturday before Christmas
Speaker 1: was actually the busiest shopping day of the year thanks
Speaker 1: to me. But the Retail Federation and all the retailers
Speaker 1: were like, well, we can't just we can't tout that
Speaker 1: is the busiest shopping day of the year. We want
Speaker 1: to like get people spending over the course of a
Speaker 1: couple of months, not the Saturday before Christmas. So they
Speaker 1: basically said Black Fridays the day, and it's, like you said,
Speaker 1: it just kind of became true just from people's saying
Speaker 1: it over time. I'm surprised that they haven't come up
Speaker 1: with a catchy name for like Procrastinator's Day or something
Speaker 1: to like pump up that last Saturday again or something right,
Speaker 1: or to keep you from it, so they call it
Speaker 1: like Shame of the Nation Day something like that, to
Speaker 1: make you like go go to Black Friday Saturday. Yeah. Um, so,
Speaker 1: and there's this website called, um, Black Friday Archive dot com.
Speaker 1: It's actually like kind of cool if you like nostalgic
Speaker 1: ads or whatever, nostalgia going back to two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: I should say, but it's just like scans of Black
Speaker 1: Friday print ads from those years, which you're kind of neat.
Speaker 1: If you're totally bored out of your mind, go check
Speaker 1: out Black Friday Archive dot com. So Black Friday became
Speaker 1: a smashing success, like two thousand and four, two five.
Speaker 1: It's a relatively recent thing that it became what it
Speaker 1: is today here in the States, which is an out
Speaker 1: of controlled juggernaut shopping and consumeristic frenzy. Right. Um, But
Speaker 1: so it was so successful overnight that um, the retailer said, well,
Speaker 1: let's figure out ways to extend this whole week. So
Speaker 1: they came up with cyber Monday in two thousand five. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty recent, and it uh is the online shopping
Speaker 1: version of Black Friday. Uh, the Monday after Thanksgiving and
Speaker 1: that was another thing. They just made up another self
Speaker 1: fulfilling myth that Um they said, that's the the workers
Speaker 1: go back to their computer after Thanksgiving on Monday and
Speaker 1: they do all their online shopping. Well, that wasn't really true,
Speaker 1: but now it is because the retailer said it was
Speaker 1: in the media reported it. Uh. And not to be outdone.
Speaker 1: In two thousand ten, American Express invented Small Business Saturday,
Speaker 1: which is when you go out and support small businesses
Speaker 1: with your money, especially ones that take American Express exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there's it's interesting. They're literally creating days to tell
Speaker 1: people basically, if you're not shopping a day, you're missing
Speaker 1: out on really good deals, right exactly. Um. And the
Speaker 1: more days the better as far as retailers are concerned. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's only so many days after Thanksgiving. So they
Speaker 1: started to think recently like, well, what if we pushed
Speaker 1: in the other direction rather from Friday on what's behind Friday?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Thanksgiving? We can't touch that for shame. Well,
Speaker 1: starting in two thousand and twelve, they started touching it.
Speaker 1: Walmart actually um opened at eight pm on Thanksgiving in
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. Um, and there was there was a
Speaker 1: general strike called that we'll talk about later because of that.
Speaker 1: Because these stores are not supposed to be open on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving is its own day. It's a day of being
Speaker 1: with family and celebrating and giving. Up until two thousand
Speaker 1: and twelve, it was Sacra Sanc. Yeah, this year, Macy's
Speaker 1: and J. C. Penny for the first time are opening
Speaker 1: on Thanksgiving, and Sears and Toys are us as well
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving evening. Uh. And Kmart is opening at six am
Speaker 1: on Thanksgiving, basically extending Black Friday through the weekend forty
Speaker 1: one hours. That's not a day. That's how long Kmart
Speaker 1: is going to be open. Black Friday at Kmart last
Speaker 1: forty one hours. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Uh. And at
Speaker 1: shopping malls, um, you're gonna have some smaller stores doing
Speaker 1: the same thing. And estimated will be open at eight
Speaker 1: pm on Thanksgiving Day and two thirds will open at midnight.
Speaker 1: So essentially what's happening is Thanksgiving evening is being ruined
Speaker 1: by retail you know. Yeah, I think the retailers would say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we've seen that people, right, We've seen that
Speaker 1: people start lining up Thanksgiving afternoon, Thanksgiving evening to wait
Speaker 1: for us to open like that, you know, the next morning,
Speaker 1: so why don't we just open? So, I mean I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of um, it goes both ways, but
Speaker 1: I pretty much see where you're coming from. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: this year it's a little trickier too, because Thanksgiving comes
Speaker 1: on November twenty eight, which is the latest has been
Speaker 1: in eleven years. Yeah, is that right? Uh? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: weirdly because they still sort of have to enforce Black Friday,
Speaker 1: they're actually shortening their own shopping season a little bit
Speaker 1: this year, right, which is probably why some of them
Speaker 1: are opening on Thanksgiving. That's exactly why it's it's six
Speaker 1: days shorter than usual this year. Um. So just by
Speaker 1: the very existence by making up Black Friday, they've screwed
Speaker 1: themselves this year a little bit. They have a week yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's um in other countries like Canada, the UK,
Speaker 1: the Netherlands, countries, um that that observe the Christmas holidays
Speaker 1: like we do in America, meaning everybody gives everybody else
Speaker 1: presents and things like that, and they spend money. Um,
Speaker 1: but those countries don't have a Black Friday, a day
Speaker 1: that officially kicks off the holiday shopping season. Um, those
Speaker 1: countries spend more over the course of the holiday season
Speaker 1: because they have a longer period of time to shop. Um,
Speaker 1: so without Black Friday in America, the retailers would possibly
Speaker 1: make more money. So they've definitely painted themselves into a
Speaker 1: corner by making Black Friday such a thing. And this
Speaker 1: year it's really kind of pointing out, like we may
Speaker 1: be shooting ourselves in the foot here, so what can
Speaker 1: we do well. Their solution has been, well, we'll just
Speaker 1: take over Thanksgiving to but that's not necessarily sustainable, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who are saying Black Friday
Speaker 1: is going to go the way of the dinosaur. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I read an interesting article in the New Yorker this
Speaker 1: morning finance article. I think it was New Yorker, it
Speaker 1: might have been New York Times, but um, this financial
Speaker 1: analyst was basically analyzed sing how the sales go and
Speaker 1: sort of saying that it's really not financially the smartest
Speaker 1: approach to take for shoppers or the for the retailers
Speaker 1: to offer these huge, deep discounts and sort of blow
Speaker 1: it out in one day. A better, smarter financial approach
Speaker 1: would be to elongate the seas shopping season at a
Speaker 1: and not even discount things, maybe even raise prices. And
Speaker 1: his contention is that they're shooting themselves in the foot.
Speaker 1: But um, I think he's right. He probably is. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, if you were one of those
Speaker 1: people like um, like me frankly who went to the
Speaker 1: mall the day after Halloween and saw that the lights
Speaker 1: were up, the garland was out, Santa's workshop was ready
Speaker 1: to go like Halloween, the November one, the place was
Speaker 1: totally decked out for Christmas with Christmas Carol's piping through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: see that's that's ridiculous. But see without but that was
Speaker 1: the great thing about Black Fight. It's like you, you know,
Speaker 1: you had a month they're just kind of chilling out
Speaker 1: everything getting ready between between Halloween and Thanksgiving. Then you
Speaker 1: had Thanksgiving and in the holiday season started without Black Friday.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like this, um this damn that's holding
Speaker 1: back the holiday season from spilling into basically October. But
Speaker 1: with retailers figuring out that it's an impedence to them
Speaker 1: making money, it probably won't start the official season any longer.
Speaker 1: It'll probably be further back from now on. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think we're in I don't know about well, technically
Speaker 1: slightly in the minority. Um. In two thousand, thirteen of
Speaker 1: the population of American adults said they will shop on
Speaker 1: Black Friday. So fifty three, Yeah, that puts us in
Speaker 1: the minority by a bit. And two thousand eleven a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty two Americans, uh millions, just a hundred,
Speaker 1: but they spent five hundred billion dollars. Yeah, hundred fifty
Speaker 1: two really rich Americans. Uh, A hundred fifty two million
Speaker 1: shopped on that day for an average of three hours
Speaker 1: at a time, which is uh not too long, but
Speaker 1: that's I mean, three hours is like ever. But I
Speaker 1: saw a woman who did sixteen though, like a sixteen
Speaker 1: hour stretch of shopping. She better have gotten it all
Speaker 1: done at least, I hope. So you know, yeah, like
Speaker 1: if she's shop for sixteen hours and only got like
Speaker 1: three gifts, it's not time amost spent. Um. There's also evidence,
Speaker 1: uh that the internet is basically knocking on Black Friday's door.
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving days the fastest growing online shopping day. UM. And
Speaker 1: I think like se of the people who said that
Speaker 1: they're going to shop on Black Friday said they'll do
Speaker 1: some or most of it online. Um. So the Internet
Speaker 1: is still there for retailers to make money, but the
Speaker 1: idea of Black Friday in store sales going extinct is
Speaker 1: probably not going to happen because it's its own thing.
Speaker 1: Like there's this one consumer psychologist or consumer analysts I
Speaker 1: think pointed out that it's it's a tradition number one
Speaker 1: nowadays uh and number two, there's a certain element of
Speaker 1: like sport to it. It's it's more than just getting
Speaker 1: a good deal. It's like, you know, throwing a fist
Speaker 1: at somebody while you get a good dealers something to
Speaker 1: it that that transcends the whole thing. So we mentioned
Speaker 1: door Busters. It's a central part of the cog that
Speaker 1: is Black Friday, and it goes back in print, believe
Speaker 1: it or not, to the year nineteen seventeen in anecdotally,
Speaker 1: where in a retailer will basically say, you know what,
Speaker 1: we have one item or usually it's a few now,
Speaker 1: but some really deep, deep and really super great deals
Speaker 1: on just a few select items, so like, for example,
Speaker 1: a good laptop for a hundred and eighty dollars, and
Speaker 1: like deals like that iPods for half off, for a
Speaker 1: TV for like two really really like you said, very
Speaker 1: good discounts. But here's the deal. It's a scam people,
Speaker 1: it's a bait and switch. It's it's a bait and switch.
Speaker 1: They they've only got a very limited amount of these
Speaker 1: select items, which is why the violence happens, which we'll
Speaker 1: get to in a minute. Uh. And then after that
Speaker 1: they're hoping you get in there. You don't get that laptop,
Speaker 1: but you're like, screw it. I'm at Walmart at five am.
Speaker 1: I might as well buy some stuff regular priced or
Speaker 1: slightly discounted items. Um. And you know that's how they
Speaker 1: get you in the store. That's how they get you.
Speaker 1: It is, um, and it is It's true that there
Speaker 1: these items do exist, and they are for that deal.
Speaker 1: There there there for that price, I should say, Um,
Speaker 1: but there's only like ten and in the fine print
Speaker 1: it's like one person and that deals is for in
Speaker 1: stock only, like you can't get a rain check or
Speaker 1: anything like that. But the the concept that these deals
Speaker 1: do exist for those items that are in the store,
Speaker 1: coupled with whoever physically gets their hands on that item
Speaker 1: first gets that deal. Yeah, um, leads to doors actually
Speaker 1: being busted. It's called recipe for disaster. Yeah. Um. All right,
Speaker 1: So before we get to the dark days and the
Speaker 1: bad stuff that can happen. Truly, let's do a little
Speaker 1: message break. All right, let's go back a little bit
Speaker 1: to two thousand eight and probably the well I was
Speaker 1: gonna say the darkest incident, but I think the Toys
Speaker 1: r US may be darker. I think this one's darker
Speaker 1: because people were involved. Yeah, that's true, all right. Two
Speaker 1: thousand eight and Valley Stream, Long Island. Uh it was
Speaker 1: at a Walmart and it was five pm on Thanksgiving. Um,
Speaker 1: so basically people there the day before. Um it wasn't
Speaker 1: one of those days where it was open on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: So they're there to wait until five am. So at
Speaker 1: least twelve hours ahead of time, there were about a
Speaker 1: thousand people already set up there. Some people are camping
Speaker 1: out intents, they're waiting, They got their coffee, they're probably
Speaker 1: slugging some jim Beam to warm the belly. And uh
Speaker 1: so the police came out and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: let's set up a buffer zone, a barricade, which worked
Speaker 1: till about two am when that was breached and the
Speaker 1: cops basically said, we're out of here. This isn't part
Speaker 1: of our job. Yeah, the crowd had turned angry. Um
Speaker 1: a little bit after that. Um, so one of the
Speaker 1: store employees had some family members come and like they
Speaker 1: took them out of the line and took them in
Speaker 1: the store. Not a good idea. Yeah, But even even if,
Speaker 1: even if everyone in the crowd would have been cool
Speaker 1: with it, I don't think everybody in the crowd realized
Speaker 1: that they were family members of an employee. So the
Speaker 1: crowd actually turned like ugly. Yeah, they broke through the barricade, uh,
Speaker 1: and we're squeezed against you know how the stores have
Speaker 1: the entrance and then that little glass in vestibule area before,
Speaker 1: and then usually a second entrance right to get into
Speaker 1: the store itself. So there was about by this time,
Speaker 1: there was about two thousand people waiting for the store
Speaker 1: to open. It was four am. The store is gonna
Speaker 1: open at five, and a couple of hundred were in
Speaker 1: between this little buffer zone and those front exterior doors
Speaker 1: and being pressed up, literally crushed to death. And there's
Speaker 1: this fascinating article in the New Yorker by a guy
Speaker 1: named John Seabrook called crush Point, and it's about not
Speaker 1: just this incident, but um uh, just crushings in general.
Speaker 1: Where somebody. Yeah, we covered that like years ago. It
Speaker 1: seems like it, Yeah, totally, but you check out that article. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people literally yelling, pushed the doors in chanting this, and
Speaker 1: just before five o'clock, it's it's a pretty bad scene.
Speaker 1: And uh, workers in that vegetablebule area realized that there
Speaker 1: was a pregnant lady name uh Leanna Lockley being crushed
Speaker 1: against the doors, and so they're like, we gotta get
Speaker 1: this lady in here, opened the doors enough to squeeze
Speaker 1: her through. She got in um and then the crowd
Speaker 1: surged forward and it's just kind of went downhill from there,
Speaker 1: and they still did the ten, nine eight countdown. Isn't
Speaker 1: that mind boggling. It's mind boggling that they didn't. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, that the cops left, Yeah they said.
Speaker 1: They said, apparently in a court deposition that the cops
Speaker 1: when they left said, controlling the crowds not in our
Speaker 1: job description. Good luck. Walmart had hired a security force
Speaker 1: of two for the event. One person hadn't shown up,
Speaker 1: the other one was inside the store not helping. So
Speaker 1: they got a bunch of their stock guys, their their
Speaker 1: biggest dudes that they could find and said come staying
Speaker 1: as vestibule and help anybody who like falls down or
Speaker 1: if that's what I would have been, like, dude, that's
Speaker 1: not in my job description exactly. Well they didn't say that. Um.
Speaker 1: And when the doors finally opened after the festive countdown,
Speaker 1: while these people were being crushed against the front, unbelievable,
Speaker 1: the doors started to open and right when they opened,
Speaker 1: they actually gave weight and were literally busted by this
Speaker 1: wave of humanity. Yeah, and at that point the employees um,
Speaker 1: their little red rover line was completely ineffective. People are
Speaker 1: getting knocked down, some of the workers are getting blown
Speaker 1: out of the way. Some are jumping on vending machines.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. Well, yeah, a couple of them like climbed
Speaker 1: up the coke machine, like get out of the way, first,
Speaker 1: safe harbor. One guy who was in the in the
Speaker 1: way of the crowd when the doors gave way. Um,
Speaker 1: this article by John Sebrook puts it that he was
Speaker 1: blown back. So again, there's a vestibule, there's the outer doors.
Speaker 1: There's a vestibule, and then there's inner doors, and then
Speaker 1: there's the store. This guy got blown from the outer
Speaker 1: doors all the way through the vestibule through the inner
Speaker 1: doors into the store by this wave of people, two
Speaker 1: thousand people. Yeah, just coming in all at once, all
Speaker 1: trying to get their hands on that doorbuster, you know,
Speaker 1: like an iPod or something. Yeah, so that's not the
Speaker 1: end of the story, sadly, Um, people are getting crushed.
Speaker 1: This pregnant woman trips over some old woman. She's on
Speaker 1: the ground at this point, pregnant. Yeah. Leanna Lockley in
Speaker 1: danger of being you know, trampled to death. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then she somehow managed to get to her knees and
Speaker 1: saw an employee, Um, do you know how to pronounce
Speaker 1: his first name? Uh, Jim ta More, Jim tad More.
Speaker 1: He uh was assigned to help people in case anyone
Speaker 1: fell fell down next to her. The doors fell on
Speaker 1: top of him, and two thousand people trampled over those
Speaker 1: doors and killed him. Yeah, he was trampled to death.
Speaker 1: He died of asphyxiation being crushed under the door. And
Speaker 1: he was a stop guy at six am, six or
Speaker 1: three am. He was pronounced dead one hour after the
Speaker 1: festive countdown to let people get into shop, and that
Speaker 1: was at the hospital an hour later, so he most
Speaker 1: likely died on the scene. Um, and pretty awful. What's crazy, Chuck?
Speaker 1: If that story is not bad enough, tramplings are actually
Speaker 1: really common and like somebody might not die, You might
Speaker 1: not be asphyxiated, and he might not have died had
Speaker 1: he not gotten caught under the door. Um, but the
Speaker 1: people getting knocked down. If you want to see this,
Speaker 1: just go on to YouTube and type in black Friday,
Speaker 1: not even Black Friday tramplings. Just type in black Friday
Speaker 1: and you will see tons of compilations of store security
Speaker 1: footage of people coming in right when the story opens
Speaker 1: on a Black Friday sale, just climbing over one another,
Speaker 1: knocking each other down. Some people help other people up
Speaker 1: or drag them out of the way or whatever, but
Speaker 1: just as frequently people just climb over the ones who
Speaker 1: are down for a sale. It's it's insane. I seriously
Speaker 1: encourage everybody to go check out some video of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't believe that after this incident that there wasn't
Speaker 1: a law pass outlawing outright black Friday sales. You know
Speaker 1: that is not happening. Well, but it's ridiculous because there's
Speaker 1: it's economists and analysts have proven that you can have
Speaker 1: like even it's not like they'd lose money. They would
Speaker 1: probably make more money if they didn't have these blockbuster sales.
Speaker 1: So it's not like they could say, well, you can't,
Speaker 1: you're keeping me from doing my business. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just can't believe they can't outlaw something like this.
Speaker 1: So that was That was a pretty horrendous example of
Speaker 1: a crowd crush and a trampling. Yea. Um, but other
Speaker 1: things that happen. You mentioned the Toys r Us in
Speaker 1: Palm Desert, California a couple of years back, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was in two thousand and eight. These two women
Speaker 1: got in a fist fight and then their husbands got
Speaker 1: into it. And basically, first of all, these two men
Speaker 1: were carrying guns into a Toys r Us for Christmas shop,
Speaker 1: which a little weird, uh, And they started a shootout
Speaker 1: with each other, basically, and not a very skilled one apparently.
Speaker 1: I read about it like one guy forgot to cocas gun.
Speaker 1: The other guy like his didn't work either, So they
Speaker 1: start chasing each other through the store, through the store,
Speaker 1: shooting at each other. Luckily, no one else died, but
Speaker 1: those two gentlemen shot each other and died. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the toys are us because of their wife's got in
Speaker 1: a fist fight on Black Friday at a toys rust
Speaker 1: during Christmas shopping. I'm surprised no one else if they're
Speaker 1: running through the store shooting. Uh. I think everybody cleared
Speaker 1: out of the their way. Yeah, I I know, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't follow him around and be like, hey, guys, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? Where's the Doorbusters. In two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: a woman at a Los Angeles Walmart uh pepper sprayed
Speaker 1: some people in the video games. Initially, the cops saw
Speaker 1: it while this you know lady was some Black Friday jerk,
Speaker 1: which would make her a pretty awful, awful person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but apparently the real story is and then she actually
Speaker 1: got out of it. Um was that her children were attacked, uh, punched, kicked,
Speaker 1: thrown to the ground by shoppers trying to get an
Speaker 1: Xbox from these children, and so she defended her kids
Speaker 1: by pepper spraying these jerks. Right, And this thing still
Speaker 1: hasn't been settled. The most recent thing I saw was that,
Speaker 1: Um a year on. So last year, UM, the cops
Speaker 1: still hadn't filed charges, so I guess they believed her story.
Speaker 1: But she shopped anyway after that happened and bought her items.
Speaker 1: So she pepper sprayed a bunch of people, affects twenty people,
Speaker 1: causes a bit of a trampling pandemonium. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: two horrible things happened after that. One, like you said,
Speaker 1: the lady took her kids and her items and went
Speaker 1: to the store and checked out, bought her stuff. Uh. Second,
Speaker 1: the people outside the immediate circle where sher pepper spray,
Speaker 1: but still in that little area, stuck around, still tried
Speaker 1: to get their hands on the sale item, and they're
Speaker 1: like checking out in their eyes and those are watering,
Speaker 1: and there's like just just ring it up. Let me
Speaker 1: get home. Yeah. And then of course took there's um
Speaker 1: the workers as well. Well yeah, I mean, no one
Speaker 1: wants to work on Thanksgiving. And and this year, like
Speaker 1: we said, a lot of retailers are opening on Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: and there's really not anything they can do about it
Speaker 1: if they want to keep their job, which is really sad.
Speaker 1: And Walmart Uh employees planned a strike I think last
Speaker 1: year in two thousand twelve, and it didn't work. Only
Speaker 1: twenty six stores reported striking employees. So for fear of
Speaker 1: losing their jobs, probably they had to come to work anyway. Well,
Speaker 1: Camart in particular was criticized this year for opening at
Speaker 1: six am on Thanksgiving, and Camart said, these people don't
Speaker 1: have to work, like, we're not forcing them to work,
Speaker 1: and uh, their critics are saying, well, actually, that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily true because you're using part time seasonal employees and
Speaker 1: there's no federal mandate that those people have to have
Speaker 1: holidays or time off. So therefore they're in a position
Speaker 1: where they either work or you can fire them legally.
Speaker 1: Uh so they kind of do have to work. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of ugliness on Black Friday, but chuck, if
Speaker 1: you are just the average normal person, like my brother
Speaker 1: in law loves to go Black Friday shopping and he'll
Speaker 1: he'll like, go at midnight, go to the Doorbuster sales.
Speaker 1: But he's like, he's not crazy. Well, the majority of
Speaker 1: them don't end in violence, because this happens all over
Speaker 1: the country and these are isolated incidents, so it's not
Speaker 1: like at every Doorbuster sale you're gonna get trampled. But
Speaker 1: there is a risk there is, and um, the people
Speaker 1: you want to look out for. Apparently there's a study
Speaker 1: of consumer behavior at Black Friday sales and it was
Speaker 1: a legitimate study. UM it said that you want to
Speaker 1: look out for the people who have done a lot
Speaker 1: of planning, because they exhibit the most anti social behavior
Speaker 1: like shoving, pushing, yelling. They've got their plan in place
Speaker 1: and nothing's going to alter that, and they feel like
Speaker 1: they've really put the time in and they're not about
Speaker 1: to lose that doorbuster who has never done it before
Speaker 1: and just showed up, who just lucked into into line
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know that, Like remember the famous Who
Speaker 1: concert in the seventies where the people were trampled. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's in that UM New York article. They got rid
Speaker 1: of general emission seating after that, Like, why can't they
Speaker 1: do something about this? You know, I think the law
Speaker 1: steps in and said, wait a minute, you can't just
Speaker 1: open the doors to a concert venue and say first
Speaker 1: one in gets front row. Um, they still have general admission,
Speaker 1: not for big arena shows. Oh yeah, yeah, Well you
Speaker 1: know that there was like just one door open and
Speaker 1: like four others locked, and people were getting crushed up
Speaker 1: against the locked doors, and the people inside who are
Speaker 1: working at that concert like just never opened the doors
Speaker 1: even though people were dying. So remember what we cover
Speaker 1: that in man is so like vivid in my mind
Speaker 1: from way early on because we studied the the science
Speaker 1: of crowd surges. I don't know what it was either,
Speaker 1: because this article is not that old. It's just like
Speaker 1: it definitely wasn't about this. I had to do with
Speaker 1: something else. But um, yeah, dirty bad stuff. Or you
Speaker 1: can take another approach. Yeah this is this is a
Speaker 1: different approach, you could say. In the an artist named
Speaker 1: Ted Dave gave birth to uh what's now called by
Speaker 1: Nothing Day, wherein the people are encouraged to not buy
Speaker 1: anything for twenty four hours and to fight the power
Speaker 1: and consumerism by not showing up at all and not
Speaker 1: just fight the power. The guy who created ted ted Dave.
Speaker 1: He's a Vancouver guy who came up within the nineties. Um,
Speaker 1: it was also not just to stick it to the man,
Speaker 1: which I can only imagine if nobody bought anything in
Speaker 1: America on Black Friday, what kind of crippling effect that
Speaker 1: would have on the economy. But he was also saying personally,
Speaker 1: it's that's a good day to not buy anything and
Speaker 1: be take stock of how much you do maybe waste
Speaker 1: or spend or whatever. Just think about your consumer your
Speaker 1: consumerism for one day and during that time, like don't
Speaker 1: buy anything, and don't gas up your car the night before,
Speaker 1: don't get a bunch of milk the night before, like
Speaker 1: just just be normal. On one day of the year,
Speaker 1: don't buy anything, and that's Buy Nothing Day. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of become this big thing ever since Adbusters, the
Speaker 1: people who gave us Occupy Wall Street kind of found
Speaker 1: out about it and adopted it and just took the
Speaker 1: whole thing worldwide. It's pretty amazing. It is. So if
Speaker 1: you go to a Black Friday sale and you see
Speaker 1: a bunch of people dressed as zombies, they're making fun
Speaker 1: of you. They're making fun of zombie consumers. Same with
Speaker 1: the people who are dressed as sheep. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: there's Zenti clause. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe I'll dress
Speaker 1: up as a sheep, yeah and just walk around and
Speaker 1: buy and people's faces. And then if I'm there, might
Speaker 1: you know, pick up a laptop right. Um. There's also
Speaker 1: credit card cut up stations yeah, yeah, where you can
Speaker 1: get rid of your credit card and just shook his consumerism. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there's the my favorite, the what is it
Speaker 1: the Worldly gig Congo line. Oh I haven't heard of
Speaker 1: that is that two disrupt shoppers. The whole the whole
Speaker 1: point is just kind of it serve as a mirror.
Speaker 1: I think two people like, look at yourselves. You're ridiculous.
Speaker 1: You think I look stupid. You're the one that looks stupid.
Speaker 1: We're not even buying anything. But yeah, so there's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a twofold thing. It's one like just kind
Speaker 1: of reflecting personally slash sticking it to the man as
Speaker 1: an individual consumer, like realizing your power in the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of things. It's all kind of hinges on you
Speaker 1: spending your money and if you're O, then you're taking
Speaker 1: the power back or pointing out to other people just
Speaker 1: how ridiculous they're being at consumers. As consumers, people probably like,
Speaker 1: whered you get the cheap costume rite? Exactly? What was
Speaker 1: that on? Um? So I've got one last thing? Uh
Speaker 1: I noticed the other day. I've never heard of this before.
Speaker 1: In China? Do you think we liked the shop? Chinese
Speaker 1: love the shop And they have something that they have
Speaker 1: created called Singles Day and it is on November eleven,
Speaker 1: So eleven eleven. The four one's stand for single people
Speaker 1: and they're basically like, hey, because in China, I think
Speaker 1: you're encouraged to marry. So this is like, hey, be single,
Speaker 1: go out and treat yourself to something online and buy
Speaker 1: something because it's Singles Day and you should celebrate being single.
Speaker 1: And it's a huge deal. They spent uh, well, this
Speaker 1: e commerce platform in China called Ali Baba's the one
Speaker 1: who really got behind it recently, and they spent five
Speaker 1: point seven billion dollars on Singles Day this year, which
Speaker 1: dwarfs Cyber Monday by three times almost and it's the
Speaker 1: biggest online shopping day in the world. And in the
Speaker 1: first six minutes this year, just a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: they spent a hundred and sixty million dollars in the
Speaker 1: first six minutes wow online in China, just to celebrate
Speaker 1: being single, and they're encouraged the shop for themselves, which
Speaker 1: I don't think. We pointed out a lot of people
Speaker 1: on Black Friday when um, when I asked, say that
Speaker 1: they do some of the shopping for themselves, all gifts.
Speaker 1: It's like I want that laptop. I think forty forty
Speaker 1: seven percent or forty one of people who said they're
Speaker 1: gonna stop on Black Friday said they'll do most of
Speaker 1: the shopping for themselves. I usually do that whenever I
Speaker 1: go out, like genuinely Christmas shopping, I'll pick up something
Speaker 1: for myself. But these people are saying they're mostly shopping
Speaker 1: for themselves. Now I don't mostly, but I'll just I'll
Speaker 1: just treat myself. And I want to say, Chuck, we're not.
Speaker 1: We don't begrudge anybody going to Black Friday sales. If
Speaker 1: that's your thing, yeah, enjoy it, that's fine. Just act
Speaker 1: like a human being. Yeah, don't take anyone's life. No,
Speaker 1: don't trample over somebody who's fallen down. Uh. And most importantly,
Speaker 1: I have a very nice Thanksgiving. Enjoy the people you're with,
Speaker 1: whether they're friends, family, old acquaintances, new acquaintances. Take some
Speaker 1: time to really enjoy this Thanksgiving day and relax and
Speaker 1: and just be I agree, my friend, it's Thanksgiving. Be
Speaker 1: with your family, turn off your smartphone, maybe even wow,
Speaker 1: really get crazy and just be in the moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how about that. Um, And we give you permission to
Speaker 1: shout down anybody who says that trip to fan is
Speaker 1: what makes you sleepy. That's right, you go ahead and
Speaker 1: send them straight. Yep. So happy Happy Turkey Day, Americans
Speaker 1: and uh and other parts of the world. Whatever you're doing,
Speaker 1: I hope you're will Yeah, nice, Chuck and Chuck. We
Speaker 1: should say that as usual. If everyone wants to send
Speaker 1: us happy Thanksgiving wishes, they can tweet to us at
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast. UM, they can join us
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know you
Speaker 1: can um, and if you want to know more about
Speaker 1: Black Friday, you can go to how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: I think there's like a ten worst moments in Black
Speaker 1: Friday history an article up there. UM. You can send
Speaker 1: us an email directly to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And as always, you can join us
Speaker 1: at our very festive and thankful home on the web,
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com